Mia: The attitudes of others – Taking ‘many’ medicines (1)
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Mia
Female
Age at interview: 30
Number of medicines: 12
Cultural background: Israeli-Australian
People at work have seen Mia taking her medicines and have made jokes, especially about the eye drops which have to be taken often for a very obvious condition.
Yeah, I have been seen taking a fistful of medications or when I have had the steroids or the eye drops. The eye drops are terrible. They have to be taken every two hours. So at work I’m putting drops in my eyes and people make all the jokes. Because they want to make you feel comfortable or they want to make themselves feel less uncomfortable they make the jokes about … you must be stoned, you are putting eye drops in your eyes all day or something about your stash of drugs that you have got. Most of the time I will probably just joke along with them depending on how close that person is to me, but if I know them a bit better I will say what it is or why I am taking it or if it someone who knows that I have Crohn's or anything like that.
There was a terrible time last year when I had the inflammation of my eyes so I had this horrible red drooping, watering eye and everyone was like, ‘You shouldn’t be at work if you have got conjunctivitis, that's disgusting.’ I go, ‘I don’t have conjunctivitis.’ ‘It looks like conjunctivitis to me. Get away from me. Don’t touch me.’ I'm like I have got to tell people and I go ‘It's uveitis’. They go, ‘How do you know?’ It is, just, shush!
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.